Data ➡️ Information and the Linked Digital Public Administration

Fidel Santiago, Programme manager for the ISA² Programme, Interoperability Unit, Directorate General for Informatics, European Commission

Our society is based on data, information if you wish. This text itself is data getting to you through a more or less complex combination of technologies. Since you are reading it, most probably your work also involves data and/or information: how to collect or generate it, how to process it, how to digest it. We can agree that data are not as rich as, let us say, information, at least from this point of view: information is data with meaning (semantics). A number per se it is not so meaningful. For instance 42 as such does not convey much meaning. We need something to move from the data, the 42, to some information: 42 years, 42 days, 42 as the answer…

As you are reading this blog post, I guess your feeds are flooding with information, data?, about new technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). Together with other innovations, they represent the future of information processing. It is claimed that they will change the way we live and even the way we know. Of course, the future without data looks bleak, and even if we have just that, data, it does not improve too much. We need information to be able to develop all the potential for these new technologies. Moreover, we need information that can be understood and shared by our computers.

Here it is where the idea of the semantic web plays a role. The semantic web allows computers to understand our information; it enriches the data already available everywhere into information, into meaning for a computer. It provides, indeed, semantics to the data. Related to the semantic web is the concept of linked open data: enriched data, information linked to other information and all of these freely accessible on the web. Is it needed to stress how important this is for current AI paradigms based on computers learning by themselves? A huge trove of information pre-tagged, pre-digested, pre-linked, at the disposal of our in-development AIs for them to leverage and to learn even faster what we already know and then… who knows.

The concept of semantic web is already quite old, created around 2001; however, it is only now that we see how the technology is finally reaching commercial maturity and a generalised uptake of the technology and even of the concept. Thanks, to a certain extent, to public administrations opening the data they custody, enriching that data into information and linking all that information to create a continuum of information that we can use, directly or through our computers.

I find the topic a very interesting one, I hope you too. One where there is a rare combination of powerful mature tools and, at the same time, still the possibility to discuss and shape the future this technology will take. To talk about this and much more, we will gather together next 14 June in Sofia to hold the 8^th edition of the Semantic Interoperability Conference, SEMIC2018. Organised by the ISA² Programme of the European Commission, this year the main topic will be ‘Linked Digital Public Administrations’ emphasising the need for linking information and data in the public sector to bring benefits to citizens and business in Europe. Will you be there to continue the discussion?

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